Tourism Matters Symposium

I was invited by the Tacoma Regional Convention + Visitor Bureau to attend the Tourism Matters Symposium today at the Courtyard by Marriott in downtown Tacoma. The symposium included breakfast and lunch catered by the wonderful Pacific Grill. I had no idea what to expect, but it ended up being very fun and informative. This is going to be a fairly link-heavy post, but that's only because I met so many great folks there who deserve your patronage. I'll put all the links at the bottom.

For starters, I met a fellow attendee in the parking lot. We just started randomly talking, and she asked me if I was going to the symposium. So we walked there together. She told me she worked for the Hampton Inn & Suites Tacoma. Once we got inside and checked in (my name tag even said "Itinerant Writer" on it), she got together with the other Hampton Inn folks to set up their vendor booth. They were giving away a Nintendo Wii, so I was invited to play a few rounds of Super Mario Kart with them. It was fun, but I was soundly defeated. Turns out, I'm a reckless driver when it comes to the Wii. Who knew?

While we waited for the ballroom to open up, we stood around and mingled a bit. I looked over the Tacoma & Pierce County tourism booklets. Spoke with the representative from Fife Flowers, who did the lovely centerpieces for the tables. Drank some coffee. Took a look at other vendor booths, including Stina's Cellars.

The ballroom finally opened, and there was open seating for breakfast. I found myself sitting next to two nice women from Seattle Southside Visitor Services. To be honest, I had no idea such an organization existed. They cover tourism in Tukwila, Sea Tac, Kent, and Des Moines. I also sat with a couple of women who worked for the Pierce County government. The breakfast (which was great: croissant, fruit and mini broccoli and egg casseroles) took place during the annual meeting and business plan.

I want to make a few important points that I took away from this meeting.

Why does tourism matter?
- Pierce County gets 4.735 million visitors.
- These visitors have generated 11,360 jobs.
- These visitors spend $968 million, which generates $71.6 million in tax receipts.

After the breakfast meeting, we had a 20 minute break before the expert panels. There were three: Tour + Travel, Meetings + Events, and Marketing + Public Relations. I attended the Tour + Travel panel. The two experts on that panel were Jake Haupert from EverGreen Escapes and Michael Rogers from Beeline Tours and Seattle Food Tours.

It was an insightful panel. They talked a lot about how they got started in the industry, how they started their businesses, how they run their businesses, do their marketing, etc. It was very inspiring to hear the passion in their voices that they have for their work. These are guys who clearly love what they do and bend over backwards to accommodate their clients.

The panel lasted about an hour and then it was almost time for the awards luncheon. We had assigned tables for that, so I ended up sitting with 2 folks from Hampton Inn & Suites, 2 guys from Hotel Murano, C.R. Roberts from The News Tribune, and 2 people from the Tacoma Regional Convention + Visitor Bureau (including Zak, who invited me). Lunch was salmon with pesto, grilled chicken with beurre blanc, mashed potatoes, asparagus and individual apple tarts. Delicious.

On to the awards!
If you're interested, a quick summary by C.R. Roberts here.

After the presentation of the awards, that was pretty much it! It seems some people stayed and mingled, but I actually had to head home. I had quite a few projects I needed to get done.

Thanks to Zak from the Tacoma Regional Convention + Visitor Bureau for the invitation. It was interesting and really motivated me to get out there and explore more of Tacoma and Pierce County! It was also really nice to meet people in the industry.


Links:
- Tacoma Regional Convention + Visitor Bureau
- Pacific Grill
- Fife Flowers
- Stina's Cellars
- Seattle Southside Office of Tourism
- EverGreen Escapes
- Seattle Food Tours
- Beeline Tours
- Hotel Murano (named one of the top 100 hotels in the U.S. in Conde Nast Traveler's Reader's Choice Awards.
- Hampton Inn & Suites Tacoma
- Marriott Courtyard Downtown Tacoma

Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium

Today, as you know, is Veterans' Day, and with my husband being in the military, we can sometimes get some nice perks.

One of those perks today was free admission to Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium. We have never been there, and I've been wanting to go. Luckily for us, the weather is also fantastic today. Beautiful blue skies, lots of sun, and a chill in the air which was not at all uncomfortable.

I'm not going to say much about the zoo. It's not the best zoo I've ever been to. It's actually pretty small. But it's in a gorgeous setting. I've never seen a zoo in a prettier area, actually. And it has a couple of fantastic things going for it: the polar bear exhibit and the walruses.

The polar bear exhibit BLEW MY MIND. We got there when the feeding was taking place. You can see the bears both above and below water. One of the bears came up to the glass right next to us, and stuck its paw on the glass. Only a couple panes of thick glass separated us. It was amazing.

The walruses were like that too. We didn't really see them well from above the water, so we went to where we could watch them underwater. And they kept swimming up to the glass on their backs, and then flipping over against the glass and swimming up to the top of the water. It was really cool.

I also liked the aquarium quite a bit - particularly the seahorse exhibit.

Lance and I both enjoyed our trip to the zoo today. It only took a couple hours to get through everything, so we were done by noon. We stopped at a few other places in the vicinity: Owen Beach and Fort Nisqually (which is a museum, so we didn't go in, but you can see parts of the fort from outside). And then we headed back toward home, stopping at Applebee's (free entrees for active duty and veterans!) for lunch on the way.

Without further ado...
Click here for pictures!

*sigh*

Well, traveling may feed the soul, but buying a new furnace saved our lives.

We had to cancel our planned trip to the Olympic Peninsula this weekend because of an unforeseen circumstance. We had someone out yesterday to service our 20-year-old furnace, and he found that it's been leaking carbon monoxide into our house. We found our own carbon monoxide detector, which confirmed this.

So we have a new furnace. And no weekend trip. As much as I enjoy not breathing poisonous gasses, I'm a bit sad we're not going. I needed a change of scenery.

For now, the blog will have to be put on hold...until we're on the road again. The next planned trip is Minnesota for Christmas, but I certainly hope we'll at least take a day trip somewhere before then. We're talking about the German Christmas Market at Leavenworth.

Traveling Feeds the Soul

I'm so thrilled that we'll be on the road again in 2 weeks. Our 6th wedding anniversary is October 18th, and we're leaving very early on the 17th to drop the dog off at boarding and head up to the Olympic Peninsula for the weekend. Unfortunately, we made the plans too late to get a room at my ideal kind of place. I like quirky, charming hotels run by a friendly staff. Rooms at these types of places were either booked up or out of our price range, so we're staying at a Quality Inn in Port Angeles. It's just for one night, and we'll be out exploring all day anyway, so we'll only need our hotel room for sleep. But let this be a lesson to you - book early! Quality Inn is fine, but lacks the ambience that one requires for a romantic anniversary weekend. Am I right?

And I have free lunch vouchers at the Oak Table Cafe in Sequim, thanks to the wonderful owners (who are former clients of mine from when I worked at Paychex). I can't wait!

It's going to be a fun weekend.

Anyway, that's not the point of this post. I'm just excited.

Yesterday, I tried out a new (to me) place - Bittersweet Restaurant in Kent. They're open for breakfast and lunch. I was there for lunch, and on a chilly day such as yesterday, their chicken enchilada casserole hit the spot. Exactly the right sized portion. It came with a side salad.

Service is super friendly. The ambience is nice. Bittersweet likes to display the works of local artists. And TRY THEIR PIE!! I got to swipe a bite of my friend's chocolate pie (she got the last piece) and it was very mousse-like. Super delicious. I ordered the coconut cream pie, which was also very good. Pie slices are extremely generous.

Lunches at Bittersweet are nicely priced - under $10 for sandwich platters (which come with chips) and entrees (which come with salads). They also have daily specials, 2 soups of the day, and meal-sized salads. I will be back.


https://bittersweetrestaurant.wordpress.com/

Tonight, I'm going back to The Red House to enjoy tapas and drinks with my friend Lisa. I love that place. I already posted about it here.

Free Museum Day

If you have Saturday free, you might want to consider visiting a museum. There's a good chance you can get in free.

Click here for more information.

Locals may want to check out this site instead. Lots of good museums to see at no charge!

http://www.yelp.com/events/seattle-smithsonian-free-museum-day

Evening Magazine Video On Demand | Seattle News, Local News, Breaking News, Weather | KING5.com

If you come to Seattle, I suggest not asking any of the following questions:

Evening Magazine Video On Demand | Seattle News, Local News, Breaking News, Weather | KING5.com

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What's a Girl Like Me Doing in a Place Like This?

Some context to this piece: I think I wrote this about 4 years ago or so. We had been living in Germany for a couple of years by this point. It was just something I started writing. I didn't know exactly where I was going with it at the time.

Anyway, I was just going through some old floppy disks this morning and I came across this. I had completely forgotten about it, but I realize now that this is more or less a brainstorming session for the memoir I started writing early last year about our life in Germany. Many of the same thoughts made their way into the prologue.

***

It’s kind of interesting, living overseas. You get to see what it’s like being “the other” for a change, having people look at you because of your American mannerisms and your inability to speak their language. For once, you are the strange foreigner, working hard to try to fit into their mold. It’s a very eye-opening experience, let me tell you. There are times when I find myself feeling awkward and embarrassed while trying to complete the most mundane of tasks, such as buying produce at the grocery store. Things are similar, but different. And if, God forbid, the cashier at the grocery store tries to speak to me, that deer in headlights look I give her always forces her to switch to English without me even having to ask. Fortunately for me, I live in a community with a lot of foreigners from many different countries. English is the lingua franca here. Most people in the area speak it well, even if it’s not their native language.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve dreamed of living abroad for a long time. I took French in high school and fantasized about studying at the Sorbonne, reading fine works of literature and having deep discussions in French over a croissant and a café au lait. Except I hate coffee. But that’s only a minor detail. In reality, I barely learned enough French to order a café au lait. And besides that, my aunt had many French friends about my age that came and stayed with her during the summer. Trying to converse with them shattered any illusions I had about an academic life in Paris. I felt like an awkward, bumbling idiot, not a breezy Francophile college student who sits in cafes and reads Le Monde. Yet even fifteen years later, there is a romance about that image that appeals to me.

French lost its allure after high school. I moved on to college and majored in English Literature, fantasizing about living in London and discussing Shakespeare over some fish and chips and a beer at the pub. Except that I hate beer. But cider with black currant makes a fine substitute. My dream to live in England partially came true. For one brief and brilliant summer during college, I was privileged to participate in a study abroad program in Bath. No, it wasn’t London, but Bath was exciting and beautiful and has a great literary history as well. And we took some trips to London anyway. And yes, I did get to discuss Shakespeare over fish and chips. I’ve had a love affair with England ever since, and I would jump at the chance to live there if the opportunity presented itself. That is one fantasy that I think will never fade, especially since I speak the language.

Ultimately, I ended up living in Europe, but not where I thought I would. Oddly enough, I am living in Germany. I’m not a student (at least not in the academic sense; I am a student of life), and I don’t spend my time in cafes or pubs. I didn’t fall head over heels in love with a European and follow him here on a whim (yet another old fantasy of mine). I fell in love with a perfectly wonderful American who happened to be in the military. He can’t discuss Shakespeare over fish and chips at a pub, but he will drink beer. He can’t speak French over a café au lait, but he will eat croissants. When we started dating, the possibility of living in Europe never really entered our minds. But as he started thinking about a possible assignment in Germany, I vowed to learn how to polka and cook a mean bratwurst, neither of which I do now.

We live in a small village in a rural area near the Dutch border. It’s not nearly as exciting as a big city like Paris or London, but it has its own charm. I’ve grown quite fond of sheep and goats. Seeing them everyday, you learn to love them. I have even gotten used to the smell of fertilizer. This truly is a world apart from my American hometown, which, as a capital city, offered much more in the way of entertainment than watching a cow munch on grass. But there is a certain something about this place, I don’t know what exactly, that I will carry with me for the rest of my life.

Despite living in the middle of what seems to be nowhere, we are ideally situated on the continent, so that most major cities are within a few hours’ drive. Paris is roughly five hours away, Brussels two, Amsterdam, almost three. Not every place is easily within our grasp. Spain would require a flight, as does Italy. England too, but at least the airfares within Europe are cheap. I may not be living anyone’s fantasy life in a world-class European city, but I have it pretty damn good.

What are you doing September 26th?

Don't have plans, you say? Well, now you do! Get thee to your nearest national park. ADMISSION TO ALL NATIONAL PARKS...I repeat, ALL NATIONAL PARKS is FREE on Saturday, September 26th.

More details here:
http://www.nationalparks.org/americas-best-idea/?fa=best-idea-better